King's evil

Coffee was first imported into London from the Middle East in 1657. An advertisement from the time said:

"A very wholesome and physical drink that helpeth indigestion, quickeneth the spirits, maketh the heart lightsom,is good against eye sores, coughs, head-ach gout and the King's evil"

Dude, what is "King's evil"? It is scrofula (WHAT?), a tuberculous swelling of the lymph glands. OK, I think we're safe. In the meantime studies show:

• That older women drinking one to three cups a day are 24% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease.
• One study shows that after 13 years of drinking there was a 14% greater risk of hypertension, while another study (from Hahvahd, no less) could not find a shred of evidence that coffee contributed to hypertension.
• Twenty studied proved that coffee helps ward off diabetes-2 disease.
• 400 studies demonstrated that coffee was protective against colon, rectal and liver cancer.

• Finns who drank 10 or more cups daily were 84% less likely to to develop Parkinson's disease.

But I bet they were more likely to engage in Saint Vitus dancing. Well, that's all right, it's perfectly acceptable as it's now called hip hop!

The Remainders

I'm reading By a Slow River by Philippe Claudel (original French title The Gray Souls), which caught my eye yesterday at my favourite bookstore, and I picked it up paying one dollar for it. I go there almost every weekend (to my favourite bookstore), and head straight to the back wall shelf where the unwanted, unpopular books are placed and sold for one to three dollars a tome. This weekend I saw there Jim Crace's Being Dead and Aleksander Hemon's The Question of Bruno, two terrific works of fiction, that everyone ought to read, but apparently no one will, even for the price of one dollar each.

The bookstore, called Half Price Books is part of a chain out of Texas, which specializes in used and deeply discounted books. You'll never know what you'll find there. Here, it is located inside a former five and dime store called Kress' or, earlier, Kresge's, that, as all five and dime stores, went out of business, despite their success (they've been replaced by 'Dollar Stores'.) It is a grand Art Deco building downtown, the underground floor now occupied by a jazz club. I miss Kress' where I bought my detergents, inexpensive socks and brushes, but Half Price Books makes up for it nicely.

The new books they sell are either foreign imports (from Great Britain, mostly) or publishers remainders, that is books that originally cost $25, and now go for under $10. The $25 books that become remainders the fastest are those "written" by politicians, or political commentators, and related to some current events. I put "Written" in quotes, because politicians never write their own books, and not often read them. These books take 6 months to arrive in remainder racks, and remain as uninteresting as when they first came out. Others remainders are often novels by unknown writers, that just didn't manage to make it to the bestseller lists. There are illustrated albums, and history books you never knew existed, plus more sudoku collections, and computer manuals for software products obsoleted after six months.

The best finds are proof copies sent out to reviewers, who then sell them to Half Price Books, often before the official publication date. They are in paperback, and cost just a few dollars, while the hardcover editions are sold elsewhere for $25.

And by the way, some noted writers, including Stephen King, once formed an amateur rock band called, what else, The Remainders, and even went on tour!